This weekend I handed in the pre-class assignments I want my students to have ready by the time our course begins. The first class is Old Testament Survey 1, covering Genesis to Song of Songs (excluding 1&2 Chron, Ezra, Neh).
One of the assignments I am giving is simply designed to help me get a handle on where my students are in terms of OT knowledge and general scholastic ability. I asked them to tell me what they think is the most important OT passage, and why. Since I am asking them to do this, I thought I ought to do it myself, so here you will have “My (being modest here) Most Important Passage in the OT.”
I should quickly point out, there are no right or wrong answers here; nothing dogmatic is at stake. By its very nature, the answer can only be an opinion. Indeed, there are many passages that clamor for attention here. One could point immediately to the Bible’s first four words as being the most important:
“In the beginning, God.”
Majestic, true, still relevant. But for me, no cigar.
Or maybe what the scholars call the proto-evangelium (if memory serves, that is the right term); Genesis 3.15 – the promise of one coming who will crush the serpent’s head. Very good, naturally, but it must take a backseat.
Or perhaps the 10 Commandments might come up on our radar. No one could dispute they are seminal, strong, and enduring. But, again, I do not give it the first prize.
In the Latter Prophets my favorite passages are the Servant Songs of Isaiah, which speak of Christ with such power and pathos. But I still do not think they are the most important.
For me, the honor of being the most important OT passage must go to Genesis 12.1-3, God’s promise to Abram.
The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
I cannot do a good full job here of enumerating why this stands out for me why this is the most important passage in the OT, but I will make a stab at beginning.
The promise comes after the devastation of the Flood, and the confusion of the languages at Babel. God is about to make a new start with humanity, and he decides to do it with Abram (later to be called Abraham).
God gives Abram a command coupled with a promise; both command and promise are specific to Abram, but they also encompass humanity as a whole. Abram has been chosen, elected, by God in order to be his agent of blessing for the whole of humankind.
God’s desire has always been to bless people with the presence of his kingdom, and with himself. Implicit in this promise, is the promise of God’s kingdom and of God’s presence, going with Abram, and working through him.
This promise can be seen throughout all the subsequent covenants God makes with his people, including those made through Moses, David, and Jesus. It may be altered through circumstances, but it is never annulled or revoked.
When I think of how Christians are to be in the world today, this passage comes to mind. We are called to go and to be a blessing to those around us, bringing with us the manifest presence of God and his kingdom. I see close connections between this passage and with the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught us.
Closer connection can be seen, of course, with the Great Commission, also given by Jesus. “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28.18-20).
The commission and promise are the direct descendants, I would say, of God’s command and promise to Abram. As Christians they have immediate and direct application, as we are called to embody them, and the love of God in them, every day.
That is why, for me, Genesis 12.1-3 is the most important passage in the OT. How about you?
Christianity carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
This is what the Corinthians experienced, though they did not recognize the lesson when it came to them. The Apostle Paul, of course, knew very well what the lesson was, and he warned the Corinthian church about it. It is what I have intuitively known for a long while, but am only now seeing very clearly.
Jesus said this, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8.32).
It is this freedom that Jesus gives which threatens powers, dominions, and all kinds of authorities – whether political, religious, economic, cultural, or whatever. It is the fundamental reason why these power structures fear the Christian religion, because it loosens their ties on people.
I am seeing this clearly now because I am seeing families come out of Isl*m, and Isl*m ties people up more tightly than many of us can possibly imagine. It is a system of law, and legalism, which effectively binds its adherents every which way from Friday.
What happens is that a father will come to Christ, along with some of his family members. All of a sudden, the strictures of Isl*m no longer hold: no prayer five times a day, no fasting at Ramadan, no more living in a certain kind of fear.
But along with these can come another kind of freedom: freedom from parental authority, freedom from cultural norms, freedom from accepted mores. This is what they experienced in the church in Corinth.
As they looked at their newfound freedom, the Corinthians were emboldened to write to the Apostle Paul and claim, “I have the right to do anything,” and “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both” (1 Cor 6.12-13). The latter proverb means something like, what you put into your stomach (i.e., what you do with your body in general) does not matter, because material things will be destroyed by God in the end, hence we can live as we want to.
This antinomianism (anti-law position) was one of the issues Paul had to deal with in Corinth. And it is something Christian leaders are having to deal with among the people we partner with as well. (And, of course, pastors and youth pastors in NA know about this too.)
What is the solution? To bring back the law, and bind people up so they will no longer cause problems? God forbid!
For Paul, and for Jesus, the solution lies in teaching a correct understanding of the freedom we have received. In the fuller context of Jesus’ words, we read, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
The freedom Jesus brings does not come in a vacuum – it is carried along with his teaching. His teaching in full brings blessing in freedom. It is when you truncate his teaching, only choosing those parts you might like, for instance, that you will run into trouble with his freedom.
In dealing with the situation at Corinth Paul’s larger teaching begins this way:
“’I have the right to do anything,’ you say – but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’ – but I will not be mastered by anything. You say, ‘Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.’ The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (1 Cor 6.12-13) Paul has more to say about that, of course, and you can read it there.
What these seminal Christian leaders teach us is this (and reading through the NT to see the rest of their work will bear this out): One should not try to somehow contain the explosive freedom of the Christian religion by giving people rules and regulations. Certainly, it is possible to do that, as clerics through the centuries have discovered. But it is not the way of Jesus, nor of Paul.
As with anything explosive, this freedom requires careful handling, and a proper understanding of its dynamics. This is part of our task here in Cameroon and Nigeria, God helping us.
Welcome to Cameroon. Land of pineapples, bananas and mangoes, advocado and papayas-all in their season, at least. (Also land of bats and rats and snakes- but that’s another blog.)
Last Wednesday- Feb 2- when we arrived in Banyo, one thing I was excited for was that for the first time since 2018, I would have use of my Oster kitchen centre, which was one of a few things I managed to have sent up from our house in Ndu, shortly before we went on home assignment. It’s an oldie- a wedding present, actually- but on the motor base I can put my mixer, my blender, a small food processor, a slicer chopper thingy, or a meat grinder. With the delightful repair of the electrical line out of the ‘cartier’ (quarter) where we live, I could actually hope to have electricity for making my smoothies.But there are a few steps I had to go through first….
Buy fruit: Pineapple is available in Cameroon year round, but not in all locations. So just to be safe I bought an unripe on the way from Yaoundé (Jan 20) and managed to keep it refrigerated and not ripe til after we got ‘home’.
The other fruits I wanted I knew could be gotten year-round up here (just slightly more expensive) or, like papaya, are in season, so I waited til Banyo to buy those. This required a stop in town on the way IN, since it would be days before I got back to market. So, (for those of you who read List-makers of the world- Unite!) my shopping list of Bananas, bread and something else, actually ended up including papaya.
The ubiquitous African ‘flask’ has many uses!
Get/make yogurt- I know it’s not necessary for a smoothie, but I find it adds a nice texture, especially when using fibrous fruit like pineapple. I had a couple of small yogurts with me from Yaoundé or Bamenda in my cooler. The price is a bit steep for my taste- about 400 cfa ($1 Cdn, sort of) for 150 ml container- and we’ve been having that for breakfast every few days or so, so making my own yogurt was added to my to-do list for Thursday. This involved mixing powdered milk, heating water, sterilizing some canning jars with the boiling water. Add some boiling water to the milk to get a lukewarm temperature. Stir in some ‘live’ yogurt. Pour into sterilized jars and close. Add remaining hot water into a ‘flask’. Set the jars in the flask. Cover and leave for at least 6 hours. Remove, check if thickened, and remove. Sweeten some for breakfast. Leave the rest for other uses- like smoothies. Store in fridge. Simple. Just takes a while.
Friday. One of my missionary colleagues here and I had a discussion, when he shared an orange with me, about the tasty but extremely fibrous oranges here. He said that the word for eating an orange in his people group’s language is actually to suck an orange, because no one actually eats it. But we decided that the possibilities of putting it in a smoothie might depend on the power of the blender. Since I REALLY like pineapple-orange-banana juice and smoothies in Canada, I decide I should add orange to my smoothie.
Find the ice cube tray in one of the boxes. Add filtered water. Freeze.
It’s now Saturday and I have come back from town where I did some shopping, including picking up the oranges, and have some time.
I rarely buy such large papayas, but since my freezer is staying cold, I am sharing some and putting some in the freezer to make subsequnt smoothies a bit simpler.
Prep fruit:
Papaya- Wash the fruit. Carefully. Slice in half, scoop out the seeds and put in compost bucket. Peel. Section. Put some in fridge, some in freezer.
Bananas- Easy peasy. Peel when needed. If we haven’t eaten them yet.
Pineapple- Wash. Cut off leaves and bottom. Slice off hard peel and set aside. Realize you should have looked for Follari stuff when in market that morning. (Squirrel!) Text Karissa and ask her if she has some dried hibiscus for making Follari later. Remove the bits that didn’t come out when you cut the peel off. Try not to lose too much precious yummy juice. Remove hard core and set aside with peel. Cut into sections. Freeze half. Eat some.
Oranges- Removed the seeds, and as much of the white membrane under the skin and in the center as possible.
Wait til lunch time, since there was no power from 6 am til nearly noon. Decide that if this works, smoothies will be a lunch item rather than breakfast, since this power schedule is pretty normal.
Put some pineapple, orange segments, banana, papaya, yogurt and a bit of vanilla (or sugar) Blend.Add a few ice cubes. Increase speed. Blend again. And again. Taste. Sweeten a bit more. Blend again. Pour into glass. Share with Jeff. Chew parts of the smoothie and swallow. Repeat til finished. Smile and say the flavor is quite nice, but…
Karissa drops off Follari (dried Hibiscus leaves) Later in the day, take pineapple peels and core, and boil with hibiscus while making supper. Strain into a pitcher and store in fridge, to sweeten and serve to company on Monday. (still following that squirrel)
Juicer attachment on my kitchen centre. Rarely ever used this or the grinder attachment in Canada!
Sunday- after worship at Suudu Do’aare. Take remaining oranges and juice, using the juicer attachment on the kitchen centre. 4 oranges takes 15 minutes and yields about ½ – ¾ cup of juice.
Make Cucumber and tomato sandwiches.
Repeat step 6, using a few splashes of orange juice instead of segments. Save remaining juice in fridge. Share with Jeff at lunch. Smile and say… “That’s MUCH better!!”
Hey there fellow listmakers. I made a duplicate post of my last blog by accident, and I think you all received the first one, which I have since deleted.
I will still get notified of the comments if you have any, (so I’ll still get the dopamine) but I can’t approve comments to a page I deleted. So, consider going to the actual website and find my SECOND version (which is essentially identical) and leave your comments there, so we can all share.
In the past 10 years or so, since my ADHD self -diagnosis of, mostly, I have learned a few more useful things about myself. In my youth, there were many fewer things like personality tests, learning disability diagnoses, discussions of love languages, spiritual gift analyses etc. We all survived without them (for centuries!), but I think are by-and-large very helpful for people as they learn to negotiate life, education, careers, church and other volunteer involvement and relationships in a busier, more crowded and more complicated world. Some of these things about I really wish I had learned earlier, as some young people do now, although whether I would have had the wisdom to use that information is another question altogether.
When my daughter received an official ADHD diagnosis in high school, (only a few years after I self-diagnosed), I had a boat-load of guilt. As an educator myself, I felt very guilty about not recognizing ADHD in my daughter earlier, but finally realized it was very hard to see it in a child so much like myself. (In my defense, it also was not really something my teacher training over 35 years ago included much of, really.) It also reinforced my conviction that this was indeed something that we likely had in common, although after that diagnosis the poor teenager went to great length to declare that we weren’t at all alike. After all, what 16-year-old girl wants to be compared to her mother? (OK -maybe a few of you moms were luckier that way)
Anyhow, after navigating that, I looked back at my teen years and wondered why we had had such different academic experiences. And aside from the fact that we have two totally different aptitudes (I a bit more science and math, she more arts and humanities like her dad), I believe my unusual school experience in junior and senior high made all the difference for me as a distractable student, that unconsciously translated into my adult life. And it is only now on reflection that I see how a greater understanding of how I was wired might have helped me use those strategies intentionally rather than sporadically, and saved me (and my family) a lot of frustration.
When I was in 7th grade, I set hard at work to convince my parents to switch me to the new Christian school our church had started. It was one of a plethora of tiny independent Christian schools that flourished in the 70’s and 80’s in Alberta, using an American system called Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) I got my wish the following year, and settled in there for the remainder of my junior and senior high education. With ACE, students work individually through PACES (Packets of Accelerated Christian Education), reading material, answering questions, doing quizzes, marking, self-correcting, and then doing a test on each PACE. Mastery (80%) was required to go on to the next PACE. 12 PACES in each grade level comprised a year.
This is NOT a critique of the ACE program, but I will say briefly and unequivocally that this individualized, text-driven curriculum is NOT for everyone, especially those who do not learn well by reading, and also that it often focused on what most educators would call lower-level learning. Without my particular school’s supplementing in areas they felt were lacking, I think it would have been very inferior system for me in developing critical thinking skills. (I also often yearned for a quality athletic program, but I survived, settled into more individual sports as an adult, and later fully enjoyed the varsity experience vicariously thru all my children…wait….SQUIRREL!!!….)
HOWEVER, for the purpose of this blog, I would have to say that this program developed in me a self-discipline that allowed me to work independently and to actually excel within my ‘ADHDness,’ as I call it.
This ‘learning centre’ as our classroom area was called, was intensely QUIET by most standards (think old-school library quiet), and the absolute minimum of disruptions made it amazingly simple for me to focus. (Not that I didn’t go out of my way to bend the rules and disturb those around me…) To this day, when I am under pressure to tackle a difficult project, or complete something, I tend to be most productive in a quiet environment, which usually means late at night when no one is around and there are minimal distractions. Music, phone beeps, background TV chatter are all still quite deadly to my ability to focus, even though they may be helpful white noise to other people.
The main feature that I believe set me up for success, however, was goal-setting. Each day, we were required to look over our upcoming material and set goals for how many pages we would achieve each subject on a given day. If I wanted to focus more on a particular subject for a variety of reasons, that option was there for me, as long as I could justify it to my teacher (supervisor) who would come by my desk each morning to check those goals, and make sure I kept it in balance overall. As I completed my goals, I stroked them off the chart. If my day’s goals were completed there were (some) free time options. Whatever was not completed was homework. There was more to it, with incentives to excel, but that’s the basics.
After a rough first term, as these structures both forced and enabled me to be a less disruptive student in such a setting, I figured the system out and began to excel within it. By late grade 10 I had set a long range goal, upped my output, and finished my 12th grade a full half- year early, with a full ‘senior matriculation’ diploma for university entrance
I believe that the discipline of goal setting translated into an adult habit of LIST making, which has helped me manage in a world full of distractions.
As I moved out of high school and into work and university, making lists (when I did so) kept me on track – although only if I consulted the list after making it!!!. I had to self-direct thru my first job, prioritizing projects that had to get done at different times. Then it helped as I learned to map out my University assignments so as to not have them all pile up unexpectedly (OK- it still got a bit crazy when I procrastinated). Writing an outline was not dissimilar to writing a list, and helped organize the thoughts in my head and kept me from “following my nose” as I wrote papers. Of course, no one had ever explained this similarity to me, and so I often wandered around mentally, tinkering with different methods, especially since the field of education at the time was all full of ‘creative learning’ suggestions.
Making a list helps set priorities in my mind, and the details of the list depend on the needs of the day. Sometimes it’s simply a list of things that needs to get done that day, or maybe that week. When we were (semi)quarantining in Bamenda recently, having a list made sense of my day, and helps me establish some new routines for language learning, physio, personal devotions, etc when it was seriously possible to fritter away the whole day. Sometimes my list is detailed in order of priority, or with time slots on an agenda. Sometimes, if I am planning a series of shopping stops, I will map out the order of the stops beforehand, so I don’t have to decide that on the fly.
I recognize that as important as lists are for me, they are not a panacea for everyone. I am of the opinion, though, that list making in various ways can help people of many different learning styles. For me, the kinesthetic act of writing it down often helps cement things in my mind. In fact, sometimes when I misplace a shopping list, I often can remember most of it BECAUSE I wrote it down. And if I try to recall a longer list of items, I usually am envisioning the actual list I wrote, which also speaks to the visual nature of my brain wiring. (Now I may take a picture of the list, like my son Daniel taught me as soon as he got his first cell phone)
Last week, as we approached our home town in Cameroon, I recognized that I needed to stop in the market on the way in. Remembering anything more than 2 items after 10 hours on the road was not going to happen. Writing, even on my phone, was a challenge because of the ‘African Road dancing’ so I repeated the list in my head, and out loud once or twice, eventually putting it into alphabetical order, noticing the alliteration – Bananas, batteries, bread, and notebook – (OK that wasn’t actually the whole list- I only actually remember the first two correctly a week later). Saying it out loud helps the auditory part of the brain.
In one of my years as a Grade 4 teacher, I had a student with a disability that made it practically impossible for him to remember any sets of instructions that exceeded 2 things. So, after discussing with his parents, I made a habit of having a checklist corner on my chalkboard. Any sets of instructions, assignments for the day, and other things he would likely forget would be written there. Are any of you surprised that this helped almost ALL the students in my class stay organized?
One of my favorite sayings about making lists goes something like this… “The dullest pencil has a better memory than the sharpest mind”. You may be on the brilliant spectrum and wish to debate this, but as most of my peers age, those who have list making habits seem to do a little better in managing the forgetfulness that accompanies our ‘maturity.’ Of course, there is the issues of losing our lists, as mentioned in my Alice in Wonderland blog. I keep some of mine on my phone now, although keeping the location of THAT under my control is another challenge that my husband can attest to(!).
Additionally, I am fairly sure that the feeling I get when I cross something off my list provides a boost of dopamine (which is, apparently, what people experience when getting ‘likes’ on facebook). That explains why, if I have to do something that was NOT on my list, will often write it on the list, and then cross it off. There are many other reasons I can give you for this particular behavior, but I CHALLENGE any of you list-makers, to comment on this blog and tell me if this is also true for you (or your partner/spouse/best friend). We are not alone! We are not weird!
And, while I may get my regular dopamine from crossing things off my list, I am not opposed to the pleasure of some likes and comments on the blog too! Drop me a line!!
Travelling in Cameroon is a little different than in NA. earlier this week we made the trek from Bamenda to our present home. We travelled for 10½ hours (with about an hour given to stops), covering a total of 345 km.
The way the roads work here seems to be, the further you are away from the capital, Yaoundé, the worse they become. Bamenda used to have decent roads, but lately have become so pothole-ridden, that they are sometime more pothole than road. Monday is “Ghost-town” in and around Bamenda, so no movement is allowed then; thus, we left the guesthouse there at 5:50 am on Tuesday.
The big thing you notice is the ubiquitous dust; even when the sun comes up, you need to keep your lights on so on-coming traffic can tell you are there. Bamenda is kind of spur; once you get to Baffousam you are on the main road to the capital again, so the road is paved and not too bad.
Then the major thing to watch out for are the “go-slows” (i.e., speed bumps), which tend to sneak up you unawares. We were carrying a very full load, so hitting one of those gigantic things (they build them really high and wide here) could have spelled disaster. Happily, we managed to catch them all in time.
A second thing to watch for, and even more important, are the pedestrians on the road. Unlike in NA, where you may drive on the highway for hours and never see a soul, here you will rarely go a full minute without seeing someone walking along the roadside. In the towns, they will spill over onto the road, especially on market day, and everything becomes a negotiation between big trucks, small people, motorcycle taxis, and cars in a hurry. Honestly, I sometimes think it is great fun to drive here, but I do cringe when I see little ones walking so close to the traffic. We have seen and heard of far more fatal accidents here than in NA.
A couple of hours out Baffousam, and we are back on the rough dirt road – unrelenting now, for the most part. Sonya wears a fit-bit on her wrist, and it tells her how many steps she has taken each day. Well, on this day it started celebrating at one point, giving her a virtual high-five and thumbs-up, because according to it she had already walked 10,000 steps by then! All by doing what we call the African Road Dance.
The only relief to the inch-deep dust-dirt trail cum road comes when we are climbing or coming down the mountains; these short sections are mostly paved, though they tend to tease the driver with visions of what the drive might be like if the roads were all like that.
Still – I think Cameroon is a beautiful place, even in dry season, and there are some great places to stop, like the very cool creek just a few hours away from our home. We stopped there to stretch our legs, and enjoy its scenic beauty, before getting back on the long, winding, and dusty road that eventually led us to our leafy carport.
Four-thirty in the afternoon we arrived, safe and sound, home at last. And isn’t that what it’s all about? 😊
And now, for something completely different….. Once in a while, I (Sonya) actually have something I really want to blog about. Either it’s something I feel strongly about, or I hope will be marginally entertaining. This is both, I hope. And mine stuff is almost always WAY longer than Jeff’s. My apologies in advance.
You may nor may not find it interesting to know that I self-diagnosed -at around age 45- as having some degree of ADHD. (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder- in case there are some of you who really don’t know what that is) Some of you that know me well may raise your eyebrows, and, like my very observant and helpful colleague at that time, Peter, declare, “Really? You didn’t already know that about yourself?” Others of you will roll your eyes and say, “You’re not ADHD. And anyhow, most of it’s just a condition dreamed up by doctors influenced by big pharma to sell drugs to parents of restless kids, and I have no idea why Sonya puts any stock in that.” And some of you will land squarely in the middle and say- “It’s quite believable, and possibly useful to know, I suppose.” I put myself firmly in the latter group.
The “Attention Deficit” part of this condition means that it is exceptionally easy for a person to get distracted from the task at hand. Most of the time we perceive this as being children who cannot focus on their school work or listen to their teacher, but it exhibits in all ages, and in many ways outside of an educational context.
Typically, if I have a day full with a variety of tasks or responsibility, I can begin with great resolve, but I often would end up going thru my day in what I call the “Alice in Wonderland Method of Task Management’. If you are not familiar with this highly scientific concept, there is a place in Lewis Carroll’s fantastical story- “Alice in Wonderland”- I suspect this is only in the Disney version- where Alice doesn’t know how to find her way to where she is going, and the White Rabbit ( I think) tells her to simply follow her nose. So, she just walks thru the forest, and when a sudden sound causes her to turn her head, she then walks in that direction that her nose is now pointing. And when she sees a flash of an animal passing thru the bush, she then follows where her eyes look- and her nose is pointing.
For me, this means I start on one task, and thereafter, whatever catches my attention pulls me towards what I do next. Sometimes I finish my task, but often I decide partway thru (often as I walk thru the house or the office to get an item I need for that task) that I can stray briefly to start something else. Sometimes I return to complete the original task….sometimes not. If you want to reference a newer pop culture image, think of the dog on the movie “Up’ and his “Squirrel!!” moments—except I keep following the squirrel!! Days like I describe below happen a bit less now that I have developed some strategies, but without those, they definitely DO still happen.
When I was a stay-at-home mom years ago, when all my kids were in school, a morning might look something like this: By 8 am the kids have left for school, and I have a short-list of tasks in my mind that I should do before I have to leave for a 10 am meeting. My vague priorities for the morning are to start some laundry, decide what to make for dinner, take some meat out of the freezer, make a grocery list, go to Bible study and pick up a few groceries on the way home. Not leaving the house in a disaster state is a hope I also entertain. Sitting at the breakfast table, still in my pyjamas, I decide it would be efficient to make a menu plan for the whole week, not just plan for today, and shop accordingly later. I open the small fridge freezer to see what items I may wish to use up first, and see a container of applesauce that cracked and made a sticky mess in the freezer. I figure I have plenty of time and decide to wipe it up. Of course, it’s frozen and requires a bit of work, so I run a sink with hot soapy water, and warm up and wipe away the frozen applesauce gunk. I then decide that I might as well wash the few breakfast dishes while I am there and have hot water in the sink.
While washing the dishes, I come across the favorite whisk which has a cracked handle that Jeff figures we should just replace, but I think I might be able to rescue it from destruction with some crazy glue. I finish most of the dishes, except a couple of items I leave to soak a few minutes while I fix the whisk, and head to the basement to get some glue from the utility room. I pause at the top of the stairs and decide to save some steps, so I grab the laundry (at one point in my life I had a regular laundry day). I sort the laundry, into three loads, see a shirt that needs a button on it and set it aside. I throw the first load in the washing machine, and head back upstairs, forgetting the glue. I look at the broken whisk on the kitchen counter, and return to the basement, find the glue, check on the wash. Hating to waste the extra trip all the way down to the utility room, I lay the glue on the stairs so I won’t forget it, grab a needle and thread and sew the button on. I see a few other things that need a bit of hand sewing so I take the next 15 minutes to do them and putter and tidy my sewing table while I wait for the wash load to finish. I put the clothes in the drier and start the second load. As I return upstairs, I see the glue and remember the whisk. I glue the whisk handle and leave it to dry on the kitchen counter and put the glue by the basement stairs. I think to drain the sink but I remember I haven’t washed the few soaking items so I leave it there.
I recognize I really should get dressed, do my hair etc. While doing so, I see a couple of items that should have been washed in the current load and race down to the basement and add them to the load which has just started agitating, grabbing the glue on my way down. I add the laundry items, put the glue away. I don’t want the dress shirts in the drier to wrinkle if they sit in the drier after I leave, so I remove them partially dry and hang them on hangers on the basement line. Suddenly I look at my watch and realize it is 9:20 already!
I brush my hair, and teeth and put on a little makeup. I find my books and notes for the meeting- except I can’t find the study book. So I start looking for it. When I find it by the piano, I glance at the Sunday bulletin that is also there, and see that the youth are collecting bottles as a fund raiser, so I think I should take ours to the church with me. OH, but the milk jug is almost empty so I go to the kitchen and drink the last of it, and write milk on the shopping list. I remember suddenly that I haven’t made a menu plan or a shopping list, and I have to leave in ten minutes. Then I recall thinking we hadn’t had spaghetti for dinner for a while. I forget about the week menu plan since I don’t have time. I check that I have sauce, noodles, onions, etc for spaghetti, take out a pound of ground beef from the freezer, and put the shopping list in my purse.
I go out and start the car, remember that I want to take the recyclable drink containers to the church, collect them out of the garage, and run back to the kitchen to get the milk jug I had emptied. I pause when I hear the drier signal that it’s ready, but my watch says I don’t have time to get it out. I go to Bible study, and although I’m a couple of minutes late and it takes me a while to catch my breath, have an enjoyable time. Someone mentions we need some sugar for the kitchen for coffee, and I offer to buy it while I am at the grocery store, to bring later in the week. I add it to my list and put the list in my jacket pocket. After the meeting, I head to the grocery store. When I get there, I am frustrated that my shopping list is not in my purse where I clearly KNOW I put it before I left the house. I try to think about what I need and what else I remember seeing in the freezer besides the applesauce mess, so I can make a decision for the next day’s dinner and buy what I need as well. I vaguely remember writing romaine lettuce on the shopping list the previous week, and since Caesar salad would be nice to go with the spaghetti dinner, I buy a head.
When I get home at 1 pm, I open the crisper drawer and see a full head of Romaine lettuce that I had picked up last Friday and had crossed OFF the shopping list. I look in the sink and see a greasy ring around a sink of cold dishwater with a few items sitting in it and gingerly pull the sink drain out, and think I want to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I realize I am out of cheese, which was on the list I couldn’t find. I groan when I remember that I hadn’t bought sugar for the church kitchen, which is when I also suddenly recall that I put the shopping list in my coat pocket while at church, not back in my purse. I decide just to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch, and while doing so, I notice some overripe bananas. My nose twitches as I think, “Maybe I should mash these up for muffins- Or should I first go deal with the clothes in the washer and drier?…………..”
I am sure some of you can relate to days like this, whether or not you also relate to an ADD or ADHD diagnosis. And if you have enjoyed envisioning me wandering around on a Monday morning like this, you might enjoy this Youtube video, “Age activated Attention Deficit Disorder” which I think is probably funnier than my account above. Many of my friends have giggled at this video, relating well to this condition as they get older. The thing that struck me is that they consider this a new condition for them, to be blamed on their aging, whereas I recognized that this has been my ‘normal’ my whole entire life!
I personally ran thru numerous ADHD checklists, read articles and (parts of) books and set about to see how this information might actually be useful for me going forward-and how it relates to my current life in west Africa. This is clearly material for another blog. Hopefully it will follow- before I get distracted by another train of thought.
I have been reading a book on colonialism in Western Africa (written by an Englishman), and it is a depressing list of greed and misdeeds. Europeans coming to Africa to extort, exploit, despoil, steal, and take advantage of. For the most part, the missionaries were a bright spot, but even there many missteps were taken, and sad mistakes made. Overall, with respect to the early history of European ventures into the Dark Continent, we do not have much to be proud of.
Colonialism, for the record, covers the period from 1885-1945. The period from 1945-1960 is called Decolonization (all this according to the book I am reading; different authors vary a little bit). I will say that the NAB mission involvement in Cameroon (and what later became part of Nigeria), also constitute a high note in an otherwise low period in human history.
But that is not what I am writing about here. What has come across my desk just lately, from a friend back in Canada, is a reminder of Canada’s own neo-colonialism.
Basically, under Trudeau’s minority government, the Canadian government has committed $1.4 billion of aid to African nations – “IF” they agree to “transform” their laws to conform to Canada’s western and so-called progressive values. In other words, Canada is telling countries like Cameroon and Nigeria that in order to access all this grant money, they need to change their laws to allow things like abortion into their country.
Whether one is pro-life or pro-choice, we should be able to agree that neo-colonialization which arrogantly disregards the views and values of the recipient culture, and, “in many cases, degrades and dehumanizes the African people, their traditions, and institutions,” is completely unacceptable, and should be overturned.
Africans already know, and are educating themselves, about safe sex, family planning, contraceptives, and women’s rights. They also know about abortion, and for the most part find it utterly abhorrent (as do I). Living here in Central and West Africa (Cameroon and Nigeria), I call tell you that regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or socio-economic level, Africans here would find Canada’s neo-colonialism to be absolutely offensive.
If you have the time, I would urge you to check out this 19-minute video, Obsessed: Canada’s Coercive Diplomacy. If you are convinced, as I was, that Canada’s foreign aid policy in Africa needs to be revised, then I would invite you to go to END COERCIVE FOREIGN AID NOW!, and sign the petition. I was #2283.
J & S on Mission 